The broader point is that, far beyond hacktivists, these surveillance agencies have vested themselves with the power to deliberately ruin people’s reputations and disrupt their online political activity even though they’ve been charged with no crimes, and even though their actions have no conceivable connection to terrorism or even national security threats.

They are using the same tactics that both make the web great, and make it so fragile. That this level of deception is taking place can and will pull more and more things people read online into question. That, overall, is very bad for the web.